Rebranding Mistakes & Marvels: 5 Lessons: Learned

Coca-Cola learned not to tamper with a beloved brand in 1985 when it decided to re-stage its iconic brand with “New Coke.” The public was outraged and let Coca-Cola know they didn’t want a “new” Coke. They wanted their old Coke, literally a quintessential icon in American popular culture. Coke responded within a few months and brought back “Classic Coke.” Classic Coke sales rebounded. Although New Coke remained on the shelves, iteventually faded from store shelves. Some commentators felt the move to NewCoke was a marketing gimmick to regenerate interest and sales in the brandafter sales erosion due to the “Pepsi Challenge” taste test campaign. DonKeough, company President, responded to the charge saying “We’re not thatdumb, and we’re not that smart”.

2. Lesson: Expansion may require a bigger umbrella.

International Harvester changed its name to Navistar International in 1986when it sold its farm equipment business and entered the truck, dieselengine, and bus markets. Although the name is “made up,” it broadened thebrand and has strong connotations of movement and direction. As a 2013company report* stated, “Navistar was selected as a name with a strongsound, a resonance to Harvester, and a connection to its root words“navigate” and “star.” It does all of those things and has since become thename of the holding company over multiple Navistar divisions, InternationalTrucks, and MaxxForce Diesel engines.

3. Lesson: Respect your heritage but don’t let it get in the way ofmaking your brand relevant and compelling.

Miller Felpax had been family owned since its inception more than 60 yearsago. The Miller heritage could not be lost, particularly because hisfounding products were innovative for their time. However, the full namedidn’t have the same meaning as it once did, so we changed one word thatencapsulates aspects of our culture, our operating philosophy, and ourservice to our customers: “Ingenuity.” At the same time, this name placedthe company smack in the middle of the position we wanted to occupy in itscurrent and future customers’ minds, an ingenuous company. The new MillerIngenuity logo strongly asserts that it is a company that invents solutionsto customers’ problems, develops products with expert engineering, andknocks itself out to deliver to customer expectations. The classiclocomotive is a symbol of the company’s heritage-the forward thrust of theimage and the typeface figuratively leans into the future-it’s all aboutforward motion.

4. Lesson: Names have to be understandable, accessible, or at leastintuitive in meaning.

In the beginning it was unclear why Jeff Bezos would name a bookseller website, “Amazon.” The story is told that he named it after the river, of course, because of its size. An early logo consisted of a large “A” shape with a river-like line running down the middle of it. Andthe tagline was:”Earth’s biggest bookstore.” Bezos’ ambitions were as largeas the company name, and he eventually developed a business model that wouldinclude far more than books.Amazon continues to fit this ecommerce giantnow, doesn’t it?No wonder there’s a smile on the box.

Other names can be just plain difficult to figure out. When Kraft split offits snack division in 2012, they named it Mondelez. The name has beencriticized on two counts. It’s hard to pronounce-what is the correctpronunciation? And, what does it mean? If you are a linguist you mightunderstand the root words for “world” and “delicious.” Maybe. Similarly,Philip Morris renamed itself Altria when it was trying to position thecompany more as a food marketer and less as a tobacco company. What’s an“Altria”? Not intuitively understandable. One thing is clear: customers orconsumers will not work to understand your name.

4. Lesson: Avoid Initials.

Unless you are a big player with an enormous marketing budget (e.g., IBM, GE, SAP, etc.), avoid brand names that are merely initials. If your initials are well established in the market, still ensure your tagline delivers a branded proposition or benefit. Consider thecase of SAP, which is dominant in the Enterprise market and compliments it’ssmall and midsized business targets with the lines: “The Best Run CompaniesRun SAP” and “Run Better.” Of course, GE has the marketing muscle andmarketplace presence to make big claims.Neither of these brands havere-staged their names but have evolved their brands’ taglines multiple timesto reflect marketing objective and market needs.

With more than three decades of management, executive, consulting andspeaking experience in markets all over the world, Miller Ingenuity CEOSteve Blue (www.StevenLBlue.com) is a globally regarded business growthauthority who has transformed companies into industry giants and enthralledaudiences with his dynamic keynotes. In his upcoming book, “Outdo,Outsmart… Outlast: A Practical Guide to Managed, Measured and MeaningfulGrowth,” he reveals why seeking growth and surviving growth are equallyperilous, and require different sets of plans to weather the storms. FollowSteve @MillerIngenuity.

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